


I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory

by CamilleDuDemon



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Can cerebral hemorrhage count as body horror?, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Graphic Description, Lambert is only mentioned, M/M, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23872963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleDuDemon/pseuds/CamilleDuDemon
Summary: How ironic it is to die a horrible death on such a lovely day? On days like this, he and Lambert used to bathe in the streams, in the rivers, in the lakes. They used to fuck on the shore, roast a couple of fishes over a bonfire and then share stories and drink bad vodka until one of them succumbed to sleep first. Usually, it was him who fell asleep easier, lulled by the soft, muffled sound of the other’s heartbeat.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 45





	I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory

Jad Karadin’s voice is just like Aiden remembers it, a charming, low rumble, all boiling honey and fire and silk, as persuading and commanding as it was all those years ago, when he has heard it for the last time. It happened during the night he left Dyn Marv, he remembers, to never come back. A voice that has been sharpened and oiled through the decades just to sell blatant lies as universally-acknowledged truths, the voice of a cold-blooded murderer, of a spy, of a fine assassin of counts, marquises, voivods and barons.

“Ah”, he says, cleaning his blade on the hardened leather of his trousers and smearing the foul-smelling blood of one of Karadin’s men all around. “It’s you.”

It fits, actually, that it must be Karadin to confront him about all the things he has done, those he hasn’t done and shit like that. Aiden, however, realizes with a grimace how unfair it is that his long years of running from his past has come to an end just in the same place where he has met the one who has glued all of his pieces back together and built him anew; it’s ballad material, something epic that troubadours should sing at the four corners of the Continent or write down into some lovely, leather bound poetry book, one of those tiny little things daydreamers carry with them during their peregrinations, hungry for love, blood and adventure.

He smirks, at last, and Karadin smirks back. Even his smile is the same, ugly sneer as ever.

“Do you know how hard it was to find you?”, he says, his suave voice almost drowned by the frantic chirping of the hummingbirds through the thick foliage of the woods. He draws his sword and Aiden shifts to a defensive position, his unnerving grin still plastered on his thin, sun-kissed lips.

It’s a nice, warm summer day in Ellander and, if he’d care to pay enough attention, he would definitely hear the pleasant tolling of the bells coming from Melitele’s sanctuary up in the mountains.

“I take it as a compliment, if you don’t mind”, he says, gracefully dodging Karadin’s first lunge. His counterattack gets parried easily. They come from the same training, after all, they’re brethren even though Aiden hates to share part of his history with such a dreadful individual.

There has been a time when Aiden, too, was a Cat, a full-fledged one indeed. Silent kills and disposal of unwanted witnesses were his absolute specialty, something he was a true master at. Those times, however, are long gone; even before meeting Lambert he had already ceased messing up with with conspiracies, espionage and killings of humans, sticking to the meager pay of the monster hunter for hire like all the others, Wolves, Griffins and Bears.

Lambert, Lambert, he can’t help thinking about him while his slices, parries, dodges and rolls away from under his former brother’s blade.

Lambert, who’s currently waiting for him in the small, crooked room of some inn near Vizima, where they have to meet in three days to make up for a week of dreaded separation, fucking and drinking and playing Gwent like schoolboys on a leave. He can’t die, given the premises, can he? Of course not. That’s why he’s extra careful with Karadin, methodical even, as precise and focused as if he was demonstrating some moves to a bunch of kids instead of actually fighting for his life.

“You can take it as you want. You’re about to die, after all, who am I to deny the condemned man his last wish?”

Jad Karadin laughs and one of his perfectly preventable lunges grazes Aiden’s left side, just under the ribs. He merely registers it, as he counterattacks with a crosswise blow that draws some blood from his opponent’s arm.

“You know what my real last wish is, Karadin?”

The bearded witcher spits in the grass. Aiden exploits his temporary advantage to attack, but the fucker – even though he’s almost a solid century old, more or less – is still extremely fast, and he pirouettes away with the outmost grace just as the blade is about to open up a second navel in his abdomen. Aiden curses through gritted teeth.

“No but I’ll be glad to hear it before I chop your head off, _traitor_.”

He’s smiling. Why is he still smiling? Aiden hates how he shows all of his pearly white teeth when he grins. He hates that flash of white erupting like an infected, purulent wound from the black bush of his beard. He hates the mischievous glint in his all the way too familiar golden eyes and, more than that, he hates that sometimes, just sometimes, the same glint shines into Lambert’s eyes, and it turns his own knees to jelly.

But it’s not the right time to dwell on that, though. He’ll think about Lambert tomorrow, when he’ll be safe at last, and Karadin’s body would have already been burnt on a pyre alongside the corpses of those who were so stupid to follow him on this mission.

“I want you to fuck off, Karadin, once and for all.”

His former brother doesn’t flinch at his insolence. They dance a long, tiring while more, before Aiden looks up to the green, luxurious canopy of the trees surrounding the clearing and a horrible, horrible, unbearable pain seizes through his skull, knocking all of his breath out of his lungs and robbing him from his vision for a couple of agonizingly long beats.

Soon enough, the pain has gone entirely, but so it has done his ability to control the twitching of his muscles, the rapid clenching of his fists, the quivering of his upper lip.

_Brain injury,_ he thinks. _Internal bleeding. Oh, shit._

An ugly, strangled sob escapes through his lips.

Sometime during their first year traveling together, Aiden had promised Lambert he would have lived to contradict that ancient saying that goes roughly like “no witcher has ever died of old age in the comfort of his bed” but now – now here he is. With an arrow sticking from his eye and convulsive spasms making every bone ache, sore muscles tearing and screaming, burning, lungs gasping for air, his usually so slow heartbeat pounding like hell under his sternum.

A man would have died instantly, seizuring and wiggling like a fish out of water, chocking on a cry. The body of a witcher, though, a body that has undergone and successfully survived the trauma of the Trials, is way more resilient than that.

It’s going to take a while more of convulsing, a while more of incoherent babbling before a cerebral hemorrhage takes a witcher down. Aiden has even heard about a couple of guys who had their skulls split open during a fight and lived to tell the tale, but he strongly suspects he won’t be that lucky himself.

Now that’s how it feels like – dying.

It ain’t peaceful and quiet, doesn’t feel like floating and all that horseshit poets love to say when, lute or mandolin in hand, they embellish and romance up the death of a hero.

In the real world, dying is painful, and it’s gruesome and it’s unjust.

A voice in the back of his head reminds him that it’s exactly how the death of a witcher is supposed to be, and that voice sounds oddly similar to Lambert’s. Witchers tend to die gruesome, painful deaths, by the claws of a bruxa or the unforgiving teeth of a selkiemore. Witchers get squashed by the giant feet of cyclops, torn to shreds by wraiths, impaled by the heinous, terrifying antlers of fiends.

All in all, Aiden considers, it could have been worse.

_Yet._

Lambert is waiting for him in Vizima. He’s waiting, he’ll wait in vain. When he thinks about how broken Lambert is going to be after he finds out what happened to him, Aiden’s breathing start to come out in short, shallow, labored gasps.

Is this how a man with an injured brain cries?

If he could lift his hand and brush the tip of his quivering fingers over his cheeks, he would know. Sadly, his twitching muscles aren’t his to control anymore.

The only pupil that’s left contracts erratically, leaving him blinded by the bright, relentless, hot summer sun. How ironic it is to die a horrible death on such a lovely day? On days like this, he and Lambert used to bathe in the streams, in the rivers, in the lakes. They used to fuck on the shore, roast a couple of fishes over a bonfire and then share stories and drink bad vodka until one of them succumbed to sleep first. Usually, it was him who fell asleep easier, lulled by the soft, muffled sound of the other’s heartbeat.

“Good shot, Vienne”, he hears Karadin say. He would very much like to spit at his face, right now, but given the state he’s in he’s sure he would just drool all over himself and, as though he’s dying, he has still got a dignity. No spitting, then. And sure as hell no last words, because he’s not confident in his current ability to produce a coherent sentence with his skull filling up with blood.

Death, blood, injury – all things a witcher is supposed to be able to deal with without making a fuss of either one. And he tries, really, he tries not to make a fuss about the fact that a goddamn sharpshooter has shot his eyeball with a barbed arrow, but it’s fucking difficult nonetheless.

It was _his_ eyeball, after all. It’ his own brain that’s swarming with blood.

The life of a witcher is a constant dance with death but, damn, it’s easier when it’s someone else who gets eaten by a monster, squashed by a giant’s feet or stabbed by a wraith.

Jad Karadin towers over him, cruel and mocking, his terrible amber eyes glaring at him with ill-concealed satisfaction.

He’s speaking – apparently. Words and words and words Aiden can’t quite fully grasp.

_Damn,_ he’s miraculously able to think, _that fucking arrow did really mess up with my head, did it?_

He blinks uncoordinately. Or, at least, he tries, because he doesn’t want Jad Karadin’s face to be the last one he’ll ever see. He would gladly see Lambert’s scarred, pouty mug right now, his disheveled rich brown locks, his beaky nose, his plump lips.

He would, at least, kiss him goodbye.

He wonders if he has ever told him that he loves him. He can’t recall. Probably not, though.

He has fucked him senseless on countless occasions, held his hand and fought back to back with him, but it has never occurred to him to tell Lambert that he loved him, he loved him – oh! – so madly.

It’s a little bit late to feel the agonizing pang of regret, now, isn’t it?

It’s a little bit late to cry over spilled milk and wish, wish so hard to go back in time and show Lambert all the places he has never showed him, to let him taste the spicy delicacies of Zerrikania, to guide him through the beauty of Assengard, watching the ruined temples made out of marble and gold glistening in the soft, rosy light of dawn.

It’s just – late.

Jad Karadin can take his gloating soliloquy and shove it up his arse. That’s something Lambert would say, and Aiden gives a strangled, hoarse moan at the thought.

Could be an aborted giggle, could be a sob, he himself doesn’t know how to read it.

It lingers on his tongue and it tastes bad, sour, acrid. Or maybe it’s just blood flooding into his mouth, he’s not sure – and, frankly, he doesn’t even want to speculate about that anymore, what would the point be?

He’s dying today, he’s dying right now.

And Karadin’s boot pins his chest to the ground, to the tickling wet grass, he says things, a whole lot of things, and Aiden can’t take it anymore.

“Stop”, he pleads.

Speaking is difficult. Making his limp, useless tongue move takes an herculean effort. His chest hurts, and so does his head.

How long has he been lying in the grass? It feels like an eternity, but it might as well be a couple of minutes.

Jad Karadin gives him a quizzical look, furrowing his brows. There’s a brunette with him, now, an elven woman with the attitude of a bandit and her pointy nose all powdered up with freshly snorted fisstech. Her voice is high-pitched, unpleasant, abrasive.

He nods courtly at her. The elven woman goes away huffing like an impatient child.

When Aiden catches a glimpse of the blade, he knows what it’s coming.

_Lambert, Lambert,_ he silently pleads, _what a shame it is not to die by your side. What a shame it is to go without a kiss, without your scent filling my nostrils, without the warmth of your fingers laced to mine. Lambert, I would have wanted, I would have –_

***

“Should we burn the body?”

Jad Karadin glances at the corpse at his feet. A blessing indeed that it has stopped twitching, quivering and jolting, he was starting to get nauseous at the sight. Vienne nudges at his ribs, eager to put as much distance between her and Ellander as quickly as she can, given that there’s a big bounty on her head at the moment. Selyse, crouched by Hammond’s side, is taking care of the man’s many injuries.

The witcher probes at the edges of his already scarring cut and winces.

“No”, he replies. “The necrophages will take good care of it.”

Vienne nods. She knows better than to ask further questions. Karadin is specifically fond of this trait of her personality.

“Selyse?”, he calls, “Are we ready?”

Selyse, still bandaging Hammond’s head, nods.

A clean job. Not an easy one, for sure, but a clean one.

It’s time to collect the reward and move on.


End file.
